Thursday, 26 January 2017

The Love Boat, soon you'll be sailing away... Well, perhaps you will but that ship has sailed for this wee fellow.

This is a Fossil Love Bug, one of the most satisfying fossils to collect in the Eocene deposits of Princeton, British Columbia.

Love Bugs or March Flies are hardy, medium-sized flies in the Order Diptera, with a body length ranging from 4.0 to 10.0 mm. The body is black, brown, or rusty, and thickset, with thick legs. The antennae are moniliform. The front tibiae bear large strong spurs or a circlet of spines. The tarsi are five-segmented and bear tarsal claws, pulvilli, and a well-developed empodium.

As it is with many species, these guys included, the teens of this species are troublesome but the adults turn out alright. As larvae, Bibionidae are pests of agricultural crops, devouring all those tasty young seedlings you've just planted.

Then, as they mature their tastes turn to the nectar of flowers from fruit trees and la voila, they become your best friends again. With their physical and behavioral transformation complete, Bibionidae become a welcome garden visitor, pulling their weight in the ecosystems they live in by being important pollinators.

Thursday, 19 January 2017

In 2000, Mark Turner and Daniel Helm were tubing down the rapids of Flatbed Creek just below Tumbler Ridge.

As they walked up the shoreline excitement began to build as they quickly recognized a series of regular depressions as dinosaur footprints.

Their discovery spurred an infusion of tourism and research in the area and the birth of the Peace Region Palaeontology Society and Dinosaur Centre.

The Hudson's Hope Museum has an extensive collection of terrestrial and marine fossils from the area. They feature ichthysaurs, a marine reptile and hadrosaur tracks.

The tracks the boys found were identified the following year by Rich McCrae as those of a large quadrupedal dinosaur, Tetrapodosaurus borealis, an ichnotaxon liked to ankylosaurs.

Closer study and excavation of the area yielded a 25 cm dinosaur bone thus doubling the number of dinosaur bones known from British Columbia at the time.

The dinosaur finds near Tumbler Ridge are significant. Several thousand bone fragments have been collected, recorded and now reside within the PRPRC collections, making for one of the most complete assemblages for dinosaur material from this age.

Recently, Liz Nicholls wrote up an ichthyosaur from the Upper Triassic Pardonet Formation, Shonisaurus sikanniensis. This big fellow is estimated to have grown to 21 metres (69 FT) in length, making him the largest marine reptile on record.

This find might never have happened or been hugely delayed if not for the keen eyes of two young boys. All this from a days tubing on the river.

Some of these precious fossil sites are threatened by the Site C Dam. More than the fossils, the Dam will destroy one of the world's precious wildlife corridors and submerge valuable carbon sinks and agricultural land therein threatening instead of promoting food security in the North.

The true reveal for the paleontological significance is still to come. There are Triassic marine outcrops in northern British Columbia that extend from Wapiti Lake to the Yukon border. I'm excited for the future of paleontology in the region as more of these fruitful outcrops are discovered, collected and studied.

Monday, 16 January 2017

One of the natural predators to ammonites were the marine reptiles, particularly mosasaurs and elasmosaurs.

Mosasaurs, while robust predators, lived nearer to the ocean surface, preying on fish, turtles, birds, and sadly for this fellow, ammonites.

Ammonites were also prey to the elasmosaurs, a genus of plesiosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous. With their long necks, the could move unseen in the depths then chomp down with their cage-like teeth to munch on fish and those unfortunate enough to be the tasty bounty of ancient times.

Saturday, 14 January 2017

Thursday, 12 January 2017

Tuesday, 10 January 2017

Beautifully preserved specimens of Florissantia can be found in the Eocene deposits near Cache Creek in the Tranquile Formation, Kamloops Group, at Quilchena, Coldwater Beds, Kamloops Group and near Princeton, British Columbia in the Allenby Formation.

This specimen is from the Allenby Formation, which is predominately fine-grained shales and mudrocks. Florissantia are quite commonly found here alongside other plant remains and rarer, insect and fish fossils.

Monday, 9 January 2017

Friday, 6 January 2017

Shelter Point on northern Vancouver Island is a lovely beach
site and part of the Oyster Bay Formation, located just off the Island Highway,
about 10km south of downtown Campbell River. At the northern end of Shelter Bay, turn east onto Heard Road, which
ends at a public access to Shelter Point. A low tide is necessary in order to collect from these shales. I also recommend rubber boots and eye protection. This is a good family trip. The fossils, mainly the crab, Longusorbis and the straight ammonite Baculites, occur only in the gritty
concretions that weather out of the shale. Aside from the fossils, check out the local tidepools and larger sea life in the area. Seals and playful otters can be seen basking on the beaches.

These oyster-like clams were common through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The presence of certain fossil Inoceramus species allows geologists to date specific formations.

The entire group went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, as did the ammonites and the dinosaurs.

This specimen from Hornby Island is approximately 67 million years old. They were was found a perfect sunny day while collecting with Graham Beard, author of West Coast Fossils and Chair of the Vancouver Island Museum Paleontological Society. Graham has a keen eye and knack for finding the best specimens on the island.

Visit his collection at the Qualicum Museum on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. It is well worth the trip!

Thursday, 5 January 2017

Wednesday, 4 January 2017

Monday, 2 January 2017

After an exciting hike in the dark through the woods and down a steep incline, we reached the river. The tracks in this photo are from a type of armored dinosaur that date to the very end of the Cretaceous, between 68-66 million years ago.

This is a photograph of an ankylosaur trackway filled with water and lit by lamplight along Wolverine River, a
research site of Lisa Buckley, one of two magnificent paleontologists working
in the area.

Some of the prints contain skin impressions, which is lucky as many of the prints are so shallow that they can only be recognized by the skin impressions.

There are two types of footprints at the Wolverine River
Tracksite - theropods (at least four different sizes) and ankylosaurs. Filling the prints with water and using light in a clever way was a genius idea for viewing tracks that are all but invisible in bright sunlight by day.

PALEONTOLOGICAL GEMS

desolation sound

FOUR RAINDROPS...

Four individual raindrops falling on the high peaks of the Rockies could easily end up thousands of miles apart -- one flowing north to the Beaufort Sea, another reaching the the Gulf of Mexico, a third would be absorbed into Hudson Bay to the east and the last into the vast Pacific.

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TYAUGHTON

Paleontology News

TYAUGHTON FOSSIL FIELD TRIP

PaleoWire

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WEST COAST

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KITSILANO KANE

GODS OF THE SEA

Ammonites were a group of hugely successful aquatic molluscs that looked like the still extant Nautilus, a coiled shellfish that lives off the southern coast of Asia. While the Nautilus lived on, ammonites graced our waters from around 400 million years ago until the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years.

COHO FISHING | SEYMOUR INLET

Hunt Family Potlatch

EQUUS FERUS CABALLUS

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CUDDLY CUTIE PIES

Building British Columbia

Some 270 million plus years ago, had one wanted to buy waterfront property in what is now British Columbia, you’d be looking somewhere between Prince George and the Alberta border.

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FOSSILHUNTRESS TRACKS

HEIDI, DANIEL & CHARLES HELM

NEWSVINE

SUNSHINE COAST

Scientific American

EN PROVENCE

MYOMANCY | MICE PREDICTOR

Myomancy was a method of divination by mice. Their behaviour was observed and taken as a omen of what was to come. Modern scientists study the movements of mice more than the ancient myomancers did and for ends that are not dissimilar.

SISTERS | NIGHT AND DAY

ALPINE ADVENTURE

Heidi Henderson | Fossil Huntress

DIATRYMA TRACKWAY

Rare bird, reptile and mammal tracks have been immortalized in the outcrops of the Chuckanut Formation. Diatryma tracks have also been found there. These massive flightless birds reached up to 9 feet in height and made a living in the grasslands and swamps of the Eocene.

Best Friends

TROPICAL CHUCKANUT

The siltstones, sandstones, mudstones and conglomerates of the Chuckanut Formation were laid down about 40-54 million years ago during the Eocene epoch, a time of luxuriant plant growth in the subtropical flood plain that covered much of the Pacific Northwest.

PALEONTOLOGICAL EXPLORER

TUMBLER RIDGE TRACKWAY

T-REX

OLYMPIC PENINSULA

One of the most beautiful drives in the Pacific Northwest is the coastline along the Olympic Peninsula from Port Angeles to Neah Bay. This stretch of road meanders alongside the Clallam Formation, a thick, mainly marine sequence of sandstones and siltstones that line the northwestern margin of the Olympic Peninsula, western Washington.

DINOSAUR TRACK

oregon paleontology

The Farallon Plate took a turn north some 57 million years ago, sweeping much of western coastal Oregon along with it. By the middle Oligocene, the Cascadia Subduction Zone was in full force with growing pressure erupting volcanoes along the Western Cascades, a pattern that was to continue well into the Miocene. The soft ocean sediments of Oregon contain beautifully preserved gastropods, bivalves and cephalopods.

BLESS GOOD FRIENDS

rain or shine

Rain long foretold takes a long time to pass; if it arrives on short notice, it soon will pass. For the folks I go out collecting with all hikes, digs and kayak trips are rain or shine. Safety is always top of mind and prepping for the weather is paramount. Keep yourself safe whatever part of the world you choose to explore. For forecasts of marine weather in Vancouver call 604.666.3655 or visit http://www.weatheroffice.com/

EXPLORING PARADISE

DEEP COVE

SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING?

ARTWORK BY TINA BEARD

Tina Beard is an artist and paleo enthusiast on Vancouver Island. She does some of the most exquisite artwork I've had the pleasure to behold.